Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

Discussion and recommendations
This research gives us a detailed snapshot of music therapists working
with terminally ill patients in the spring of 2002. Although individual
work situations, skills, and coping styles played a large role in how music
therapists experienced their work, certain themes and trends were
identified.
Many of the respondents spoke of the work being both rewarding,
meaningful, and a privilege, and challenging, painful, and difficult.
These seemed to go hand in hand as reflected in the following comments:
“To bear witness to suffering is intense but also profound and
meaningful./ My work in a children’s hospice is the most rewarding,
exhausting, exciting, challenging and emotionally-draining, and yet
tremendously uplifting work. / This is the best and the most difficult
job!” The challenge for music therapists, and indeed other health care
workers in the milieu, may be, as suggested in the literature, to
acknowledge and authentically live that tension between the two sides of
our experience; the pain and the wonder.
On the whole, most music therapists did not receive much training from
their educational programs to work with this population. They all felt that
special skills and training were needed in various domains, but there was
no clear consensus on how this training might occur. A variety of
options, including increased attention to this population in the training
programs, seminars and workshops at conferences, more practicum and
internships, and perhaps advanced training, might best meet divergent
needs within various countries. Although not solicited, several remarks
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